Mopar, Dodge SRT Debut New Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car

The Dodge performance arms, SRT and Mopar, have debuted a new Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car, which entered competition this weekend. The car has been built for the National Hot Rod Association’s Funny Car series of drag racing. The car debuted at the Mile High NHRA Nationals at the Bandimere Speedway near Denver, Colorado.

“Our job at Mopar is to put the best race car underneath our drivers and keep them winning. We know this new body, developed in collaboration with the Dodge//SRT brand and Don Schumacher Racing, will do just that,” said Pietro Gorlier, Head of Parts and Service (Mopar), FCA. “The changes made to this new Funny Car body will improve on-track performance and help us carry on the Mopar brand’s long tradition of success at the dragstrip.”

Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) Funny Car driver Matt Hagan will be the first to harness the new 10,000-plus-horsepower beast. The two-time Funny Car World champion will debut his Mopar Express Lane Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat at the Dodge Mile-High NHRA Nationals Powered by Mopar. Hagan’s DSR teammates, Jack Beckman, Ron Capps and Tommy Johnson Jr., will make the transition to the new Funny Car body during the 2018 season.

“This new Funny Car body is something that Mopar and Dodge//SRT have put a lot of work and support behind, from R&D to wind tunnel testing,” said Hagan, who has spent all 10 years of his drag-racing career behind the wheel of a Mopar-powered Dodge Charger. “We improved on the body design. It was already a great design, a great body. But now, we’re going to have a little more downforce, a little more traction on these racetracks and it will be a huge performance advantage. We will be able to press harder with more downforce on the nose, which translates into huge amounts of downforce on the run.”

The new 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car pushes the envelope in importing as many visual cues and characteristics from the supercharged, 707-horsepower production Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat, the quickest, fastest and most powerful sedan in the world, while still hitting the demanding performance targets of a race car that reaches 330-plus mph and covers 1,000 ft. in less than four seconds.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) were used to simulate and test the interaction of air with the surface of the new 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car.

The new 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car body will make its competition debut this weekend at the Dodge Mile-High NHRA Nationals Powered by Mopar at Bandimere Speedway near Denver, July 20-22, 2018.

The new 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car body will make its competition debut this weekend at the Dodge Mile-High NHRA Nationals Powered by Mopar at Bandimere Speedway near Denver, July 20-22, 2018.

Mopar and Dodge//SRT engineers worked in unison with the Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) team in creating the 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car body. Two-time NHRA Funny Car champion Matt Hagan will be the first to race the new body at the Dodge Mile-High NHRA Nationals Powered by Mopar at Bandimere Speedway near Denver, July 20-22, 2018.

The new front splitter of the 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car substantially mimics the look and shape of the production vehicle’s splitter while generating greater downforce to help plant the Funny Car to the track.

Key design features of the new 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car include bodyside scallops with deeper character lines that provide greater visual ties to the street version of the Hellcat, while also helping to mitigate the “body burn” common on all Funny Cars due to the close positioning of the exhaust headers.

Front end graphics on the new 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car recreate the distinctive Hellcat grille and badging, and decal markers also call out the air extractors of the production model.

The new 2019 Mopar Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car body will make its competition debut this weekend at the Dodge Mile-High NHRA Nationals Powered by Mopar at Bandimere Speedway near Denver, July 20-22, 2018

An automotive enthusiast for most of his adult life, Aaron has worked in and around the industry in many ways. He is an accredited member of the Rocky Mountain Automotive Press (RMAP), the Midwest Automotive Media Association (MAMA), and freelances as a writer and journalist around the Web and in print. You can find his portfolio at AaronOnAutos.com.